What about God?

To be completely honest, the word "God" does not have a lot to do with my way of being religious - at least not when I consider the word God in a traditional sense. So, when I was asked recently "what is your theology of God?" I fumbled around without a particularly clear answer. The question deserves an answer, even if only because God is the word that plays the central role in most traditional religion.

I find it easy to say what role God does NOT play in my theology. For starters, I am quite convinced that there is no God that controls our lives, unleashes natural disasters, or decides who will "miraculously" survive a terrible plane crash.

I also can not conceive of a God that needs my praise or supplication to encourage God do good in the world. If there is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God, would this entity really have a delicate ego in need of human strokes?

I feel certain too that God is not an old white guy with a long beard and a golden heavenly throne. In fact, I can't accept any notion of a gendered God and I don't believe that using the kind of language we use to describe human beings is either helpful or appropriate. God is not the sort of thing we can fully describe or understand; after all, if God is beyond our full comprehension - as most traditions assert - it would probably be best if we could stop trying to do just that.

With all of those traditional images around, I'm inclined to say that the word "God" has more often been an impediment to my spiritual growth than a guide in that journey. After all, it is the prevalence of those views of the divine that kept me away from religion for so many years before I found that there are ways to be religious that don't depend on conceptions of the divine that I find so difficult and unpalatable.

But there have also been times when I have come across understandings of God that do indeed speak to me.

One of these is the conception of God as an intangible force or spirit that leads us toward the good. This God is a flow rather than a consciousness - a direction rather than an answer - a "way" rather than a rule-giver.

Another image of God is as a source - an infinite reservoir of hope and love and compassion upon which we can draw when our own stores have been depleted by misfortune, sorrow, and by the seemingly endless needs of a world in pain.

A third way of seeing God that appeals to me is God as action rather than as entity. This view sees God as the inspiration and revelation that come when we open ourselves to one another and expand ourselves and each other through a deep, authentic interchange. This "God event" brings understanding, compassion, and connection to our lives. God is - in this way of thinking - an action in which we can participate. It is a happening that brings love and justice more surely than any bearded, enthroned, divine ruler.

Can I really put together these loose ends to become a coherent answer to "what is your theology of God?" probably not, and in fact, a clear coherent view of what is essentially unknowable may be contrary to the ineffable nature of the divine essence.

But, a question asked awaits a response, if not an "answer." thus, I would say this:

I conceive of God as beyond understanding. God represents that which we can not prove, or grab hold of and which is yet central to living with wholeness and connection. The conception of God can serve us well if we are careful to avoid the trap of personification. With anthropomorphic images, understandings, and analyses set aside, the incomprehensible, intangible God becomes that which brings us back to the ways in which we choose to live faithfully: to reach outward and be filled when we are depleted, to find a way toward goodness when we are lost, and to participate in the expansive, life-embracing action that helps to create a heaven on earth.

Spiritual evolution?

More and more, I am hearing the notion that we and/or the earth are 'evolving' to a greater spiritual consciousness. This is strongly in evidence in Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth, in which Tolle tells of a change that he describes as

...a more profound shift in planetary consciousness that is destined to take place in the human species. This is the spiritual awakening that we are beginning to witness now.

I came across this notion again recently in an encounter with EnlightenNext, the group that exists to spread the teachings of their guru, Andrew Cohen. They describe themselves as "dedicated to catalyzing evolution in consciousness and culture."

On the surface, the sense that we are evolving toward some higher state of consciousness is an appealing one. It feels as though it creates an opportunity to free ourselves of the restrictive dogmas and creeds of many traditional religions. After all, in a postmodern world, the appeal of a single 'right answer' or a single 'right story' is very limited. And indeed, an extent of freedom is present and offered in these ways of thinking.

But that freedom is somewhat illusory. It is more a substitution than a liberation as a new magical story is being substituted for the old. Somehow, we are told, human beings are becoming something very different. It is supernaturally coming upon us and we need to cooperate with this great impending change.  This seems little different from the prediction that the Kingdom of God is just around the corner, as the followers of Jesus of Nazareth began saying nearly two millennia ago.

I have nothing against a good story, as long as we recognize that it is a story - to be taken metaphorically rather than as a fact. The problem with false facts is that they are eventually revealed, leaving behind the wreckage of shattered faith and lives roughly stripped of the meaning that sustained them. The world that we are told is evolving spiritually is also the site of tremendous hostility and hatred, an increasing gap between rich and poor, and catastrophic environmental degradation. Will these contrary trends not rattle the new stories?

As a trained biologist and a trained minister, I have an unusual perspective on the prospect of combining  science and religion. I find it frequently in the air these days - particularly among people who would describe themselves more as spiritual than as traditionally religious. Talk of evolutionary consciousness or evolutionary spirituality falls in this category, as do attempts to equate some of the mysterious observations of quantum physics with various world scriptures. It was a liberating moment when humankind separated the concepts of science and faith. It left science free to develop unhampered by dogmatic restrictions. Religion benefited too... no longer would it need to contort itself to attempt to fit its stories to the scientific facts, with which it was so much at odds.

And now, oddly, both the most reactionary and the most adventurous in the world of spirituality
wish to bring faith and science back together. The former, to fit science into its old story and the latter to build spiritual structures upon scientific foundations. Neither is an advisable enterprise.

Spirituality and science should remain separate. It is not that they are inconsistent, but that they are different. Science analyzes the way things are. Spirituality and religion speak to our aspirations and our dreams. When we try to use science to support our spirituality, we are invariably building heaven on shaky ground.